Home/Component/APU/AMD Ryzen “Rembrandt” APUs to come with Zen 3+ cores and RDNA 2 graphics
João Silva 3 hours ago APU
Recently, AMD’s upcoming ‘Rembrandt’ 6000 series APUs were expected to ship with Zen 3 CPU cores. As it turns out, this particular line of APUs may go a step further and jump straight to Zen 3+ cores instead.
According to ‘ExecutableFix‘, AMD’s next-gen APUs will combine Zen 3+ CPU cores with AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture. For the integrated GPU, we can reportedly expect 12 Compute Units, which works out to 768 Stream Processors, which should be capable for 1080p gaming.
Other specifications of the Ryzen ‘Rembrandt’ 6000 mobile APUs include support for LPDDR5 and DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and CVML (Computer Vision and Machine Learning?). According to the majority of the rumours about the Ryzen 6000 mobile series, Rembrandt APUs should be based on TSMC’s 6nm process node.
The Rembrandt APUs are set to succeed the recently released Cezanne APUs in 2022.
KitGuru says: If the Ryzen ‘Rembrandt’ APUs are released with RDNA 2 graphics, it should mark the end of Vega, which is still used in AMD’s APUs today. Would you like to see new APUs finally make the jump to RDNA graphics architecture?
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AMD’s Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne) desktop APUs will make their debut in OEM and pre-built systems before hitting the retail market by the end of this year. However, the hexa-core Zen 3 APU (via Tum_Apisak) is already showing up in multiple benchmarks around the Internet.
The Ryzen 5 5600G comes equipped with six Zen 3 cores with simultaneous multithreading (SMT) and 16MB of L3 cache. The 7nm APU operates with a 3.9 GHz base clock and 4.4 GHz within the a 65W TDP limit. The chip also leverages seven Vega Compute Units (CUs) that are clocked at 1,900 MHz.
The Core i5-11400, on the other hand, is part of Intel’s latest 11th Generation Rocket Lake lineup. Intel’s 14nm chip features six Cypress Cove cores with Hyper-Threading and 12MB of L3 cache. The hexa-core processor, which also conforms to a 65W TDP, sports a 2.6 GHz base clock and 4.4 GHz boost clock. On the graphics side, the Core i5-11400 rolls with the Intel UHD Graphics 730 engine with 24 Execution Units (EUs) with clock speeds between 350 MHz and 1.3 GHz.
The results were mixed, which didn’t come as a surprise. They probably originated from different systems with different hardware so one result might have an edge over the other that we don’t know about. Futhermore, the available benchmarks aren’t on our preferred list so we should take the results with a pinch of salt.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Benchmarks
Processor
Geekbench 5 Single-Core
Geekbench 5 Multi-Core
UserBenchmark 1-Core
UserBenchmark 8-Core
CPU-Z Single-Thread
CPU-Z Multi-Thread
Ryzen 5 5600G
1,508
7,455
149
889
596
4,537
Core i5-11400
1,593*
7,704*
161
941
544
4,012
*Our own results.
Starting with Geekbench 5, the Core i5-11400 outperformed the Ryzen 5 5600G by up to 5.6% in the single-core test and 3.3% in the multi-core test. The Core i5-11400 also prevailed over the Ryzen 5 5600G in UserBenchmark. The Rocket Lake part delivered up to 8.1% and 5.8% higher single-and multi-core performance, respectively.
The Ryzen 5 5600G didn’t go home empty-handed either. The Zen 3 APU offered up to 9.7% and 13.1% higher single- and multi-core peformance, respectively, in comparison to the Core i5-11400 in CPU-Z.
It goes to show that while Zen 3 is a solid microarchitecture, Intel’s Cypress Cove isn’t a pushover, either. The Ryzen 5 5600G has a 1.3 GHz higher base clock than the Core i5-11400, but the latter still managed overcome the Zen 3 APU.
So far, the benchmarks show the processors’ computing performance. It’s unlikely that the Core i5-11400 will beat the Ryzen 5 5600G in iGPU gaming performance, which is where the 7nm APU excels at. After all, consumers pick up APUs for their brawny integrated graphics. The Ryzen 5 5600G will makes its way to the DIY market later this year so we’ll get our chance to put the Zen 3 chip through its paces in a proper review. The Core i5-11400, which retails for $188.99, is the interim winner until then.
Home/Component/APU/AMD Zen 5 ‘Strix Point’ APU to be based on 3nm node and hybrid core architecture
João Silva 2 days ago APU, Featured Tech News
We’re still some ways off from seeing AMD launch its Zen 5 architecture, but nonetheless, the rumour mill is churning out some early information. Apparently, AMD’s Zen 5 APUs, codenamed ‘Strix Point’, will be based on 3nm process technology and feature the emerging hybrid core architecture.
According to MoePC (via @Avery78), the Zen 5 APUs will reportedly belong to the Ryzen 8000 series and feature a hybrid architecture with up to 8x big (high-performance) cores and 4x small (high-efficiency) cores, which should total in 20 threads.
Scheduled to release in 2024, the Strix Point APUs iGPU performance targets have already been set, but specific details on this were not shared. Besides the jump to a hybrid core architecture, the Zen 5-based APUs may also bring a new memory subsystem with significant changes. It’s unclear if these changes will also be seen in Zen 5-based CPUs.
The report also notes that AMD is no longer going forward with plans for the recently rumoured ‘Warhol’ series of CPUs, possibly due to the on-going chip shortage. If Warhol is actually out of the picture, then a Zen 3 refresh would be the Ryzen 6000 series, Zen 4 would become the Ryzen 7000 series, and Zen 5 the Ryzen 8000 series.
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KitGuru says: With Strix Point APUs allegedly releasing in 2024, we are still far from seeing something official from AMD. In a 3-year span, much can change, especially with the current chip situation that we are facing. What do you expect from Zen 5-based chips?
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise this week said it had landed an order to build a new supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore. The new system is powered by AMD’s Epyc ‘Milan’ processors as well as Nvidia’s A100 compute GPUs; it is eight times more powerful than its predecessor.
NSCC’s supercomputer uses HPE’s liquid-cooled Cray EX architecture and will be one of the world’s first systems based on AMD’s 3rd Generation Epyc ‘Milan’ processors based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture (around 100,000 cores in total) as well as 352 of Nvidia’s A100 compute GPUs.
The system will be comprised of about 900 nodes and is projected to provide an aggregate of up to 10 PFLOPS of raw FP64 compute power. The NSCC and HPE do not break down CPU and GPU performance in the system, though 352 Nvidia A100 GPUs can offer roughly 3.4 FP64 PFLOPS as well as a whopping 110 FP16 PFLOPS. Meanwhile, the system will be accompanied by a 10PB Cray ClusterStor E1000 storage system with over 300GB/s of read/write performance speeds.
The combination of AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs makes it possible to use the new supercomputer both for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as well as traditional high-performance computing (HPC).
Initially, the NSCC will use its new HPC machine for biomedicine, genomics, diseases, engineering, and high-resolution weather modeling, but over time it can be used for a wide range of applications that require AI and/or HPC.
The NSCC and HPE expect the new supercomputer to be operations sometimes in early 2022. The system costs SGD $40 million (around $30.16 million).
There a numerous causes that have led into the ongoing computer component shortage, one of which is the lack of availability of materials called ABF substrates. The Good news is that companies like AMD and Intel are taking the problem seriously and are investing in packaging facilities and production of substrates.
A wide variety of chips from inexpensive entry-level processors for client PCs to complex high-end CPUs for servers use laminated packaging. Usually, chips that use laminated packaging also use IC substrates featuring insulating Ajinomoto build-up films (ABF), which are made by just one company, Ajinomoto Fine-Techno Co.
While there are dozens of companies that package chips and use ABF substrates, there is only one ABF supplier that has to serve them all. But as it transpired this year, the Japanese company is not the bottleneck here, but OSAT (outsourced assembly and test) houses like ASE Technology are.
Earlier this year, numerous top packaging houses vowed to increase their production capacities. But for large companies, a tangible capacity increase is complicated, as equipment vendors can’t simply increase their output overnight. But now even second-tier OSAT players have announced plans to expand their capacity already. For example, Kinsus plans to raise its ABF substate capacity by 30% this year, DigiTimes reports. But chip packaging houses are not the only companies that can address issues with chip packaging.
“I would say overall, the demand if we look at coming into this year, the demand has been sort of higher than our expectations,” said Lisa Su, chief executive of AMD, at this week’s conference call, reports SeekingAlpha. “There are sort of industry-wide types of things that are going on. We work very closely with our supply chain partners. So, whether it’s wafers or back-end assembly test, capacity or substrate capacity, we work it on a product line by product line level.”
AMD used to own assembly, test, mark and pack facilities, but sold them in 2016 when it was in dire need of money. Apparently, AMD wants to address its chip shortages by investing in OSAT and substrate partners to gain capacity that is dedicated to AMD.
“We continue — on the substrate side in particular, I think, there has been underinvestment in the industry,” said Su. “So, we have taken the opportunity to invest in some substrate capacity dedicated to AMD, and that’ll be something that we continue to do going forward.”
Intel has its own chip production as well as test and assembly facilities in multiple countries. But apparently the in-house packaging capacities are not enough for Intel, which significantly increased its chip output capacities in the recent year following shortages it faced in 2018 – 2019. In a bid to meet demand for its products, Intel is working with its third-party substrate partners.
“By partnering closely with our suppliers, we are creatively utilizing our internal assembly factory network to remove a major constraint in our substrate supply,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, during a recent call. “Coming online in Q2, this capability will increase the availability of millions of units in 2021. It is a great example where the IDM model gives us flexibility to address the dynamic market.”
AMD is perhaps among the companies that suffered the most from chip production crisis. In the second half of 2020 the company had to supply its partners from Microsoft and Sony over 10 million of SoCs for the the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PlayStation 5 that were launched last November. Around the same time AMD introduced its Ryzen 5000-series CPUs based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture as well as the Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs running the RDNA2 architecture.
Eventually AMD admitted that it could not meet demand for its products because it could not procure enough chips from its manufacturing partners and because its OSAT partners did not have enough capacity to test and pack its chips too.
It looks like DDR5 RAM is almost ready for purchase. Chinese news outlet XFastest this week shared photographs of the first retail DDR5 memory modules from Crucial, showing the components in retail packaging, just aching to hit shelves.
As seen in the images, the publication blocked out the information on the modules’ sticker, reportedly so Crucial can’t trace the modules.
Crucial’s memory modules check in at DDR5-4800, but that’s just the start. DDR5 is projected to hit 6,400 MHz, with some vendors already aiming for 10,000 MHz. Preliminary RAM benchmarks show DDR5 with massive uplifts in synthetic workloads, so it’ll be interesting to evaluate DDR5’s real-world benefits and how it stacks up to the best RAM kits on the market today.
The DDR5 sticks in question sport a CAS Latency (CL) value of 40 and a DRAM voltage requirement of 1.1V. The UDIMM has a capacity of 8GB, while the SO-DIMM sports a whopping 32GB.
As you can see in the pictures, Crucial DDR5 memory modules comes with a boring, green PCB. So we expect these to be budget offerings for value-conscious shoppers and OEMs. Don’t worry though: High-end memory modules will likely arrive with fancy heat spreaders and tacky RGB illumination.
Crucial DDR5 (Image credit: XFastest)
Crucial’s memory modules utilize integrated circuits (ICs) from Micron. The UDIMM module features a one-side design with four 2GB memory ICs, while the SO-DIMM module sticks to a dual-sided design with up to 16 memory ICs of the same size. According to JEDEC’s specification, DDR5 is expected to push the envelop in terms of capacity. The expected ceiling is 128GB per module.
Currently, we know about two processor families that will potentially support DDR5. On the Blue Team, we have Intel’s upcoming 12th Generation Alder Lake hybrid desktop processors that are scheduled to hit the market in the second half of this year. For the Red Team, Zen 4 has been rumored to support DDR5 memory, which would make sense, since Zen 3 will be the last microarchitecture to go through the AM4 CPU socket. It wouldn’t be surprising to see AMD use the new AM5 socket to exploit DDR5.
AMD’s Zen 4 isn’t expected until next year, so Intel might beat AMD to DDR5 adoption as revenge for the latter embracing PCIe 4.0 first on a mainstream platform.
The Patriot Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3600 C20 is only worthy of consideration if you’re willing to invest your time to optimize its timings and if you can find the memory on sale with a big discount.
For
+ Runs at C16 with fine-tuning
+ Balanced design with RGB lighting
+ RGB compatibility with most motherboards
Against
– Very loose timings
– Overpriced
– Low overclocking headroom
Patriot, who isn’t a stranger to our list of Best RAM, has many interesting product lines in its broad repertoire. However, the memory specialist recently revamped one of its emblematic lineups to keep up with the current RGB trend. As the name conveys, the Viper Steel RGB series arrives with a redesigned heat spreader and RGB illumination.
The new series marks the second time that Patriot has incorporated RGB lighting onto its DDR4 offerings, with the first being the Viper RGB series that debuted as far back as 2018. While looks may be important, performance also plays a big role, and the Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3600 memory kit is here to show us what it is or isn’t made of.
Viper Steel RGB memory modules come with the standard black PCB with a matching matte-black heat spreader. It was nice on Patriot’s part to keep the aluminum heat spreader as clutter-free as possible. Only the golden Viper logo and the typical specification sticker is present on the heat spreader, and the latter is removable.
At 44mm (1.73 inches), the Viper Steel RGB isn’t excessively tall, so we expect it to fit under the majority of the CPU air coolers in the market. Nevertheless, we recommend you double-check that you have enough clearance space for the memory modules. The RGB light bar features five customizable lighting zones. Patriot doesn’t provide a program to control the illumination, so you’ll have to rely on your motherboard’s software. The compatibility list includes Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.
The Viper Steel RGB is a dual-channel 32GB memory kit, so you receive two 16GB memory modules with an eight-layer PCB and dual-rank design. Although Thaiphoon Burner picked up the integrated circuits (ICs) as Hynix chips, the software failed to identify the exact model. However, these should be AFR (A-die) ICs, more specifically H5AN8G8NAFR-VKC.
You’ll find the Viper Steel RGB defaulting to DDR4-2666 and 19-19-19-43 timings at stock operation. Enabling the XMP profile on the memory modules will get them to DDR4-3600 at 20-26-26-46. The DRAM voltage required for DDR4-3600 is 1.35V. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.
Comparison Hardware
Memory Kit
Part Number
Capacity
Data Rate
Primary Timings
Voltage
Warranty
G.Skill Trident Z Royal
F4-4000C17D-32GTRGB
2 x 16GB
DDR4-4000 (XMP)
17-18-18-38 (2T)
1.40 Volts
Lifetime
Crucial Ballistix Max RGB
BLM2K16G40C18U4BL
2 x 16GB
DDR4-4000 (XMP)
18-19-19-39 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
G.Skill Trident Z Neo
F4-3600C16D-32GTZN
2 x 16GB
DDR4-3600 (XMP)
16-16-16-36 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
Klevv Bolt XR
KD4AGU880-36A180C
2 x 16GB
DDR4-3600 (XMP)
18-22-22-42 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
Patriot Viper Steel RGB
PVSR432G360C0K
2 x 16GB
DDR4-3600 (XMP)
20-26-26-46 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
Our Intel test system consists of an Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex on the 0901 firmware. On the opposite side, the AMD testbed leverages an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and ASRock B550 Taichi with the 1.30 firmware. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio handles the graphical duties on both platforms.
Intel Performance
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Things didn’t go well for the Viper Steel RGB on the Intel platform. The memory ranked at the bottom of our application RAM benchmarks and came in last place on the gaming tests. Our results didn’t reveal any particular workloads where the Viper Steel RGB stood out.
AMD Performance
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The loose timings didn’t substantially hinder the Viper Steel RGB’s performance. Logically, it lagged behind its DDR4-3600 rivals that have tighter timings. The Viper Steel RGB’s data rate allowed it to run in a 1:1 ratio with our Ryzen 5 3600’s FCLK so it didn’t take any performance hits, unlike the DDR4-4000 offerings. With a capable Zen 3 processor that can operate with a 2,000 MHz FCLK, the Viper Steel RGB will probably not outperform the high-frequency kits.
Overclocking potential isn’t the Viper Steel RGB’s strongest trait. Upping the DRAM voltage from 1.35V to 1.45V only got us to DDR4-3800. Although we had to maintain the tRCD, tRP, and tRAS at their XMP values, we could drop the CAS Latency down to 17.
Lowest Stable Timings
Memory Kit
DDR4-3600 (1.45V)
DDR4-3800 (1.45V)
DDR4-4000 (1.45V)
DDR4-4133 (1.45V)
DDR4-4200 (1.45V)
G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 C16
13-14-14-35 (2T)
N/A
N/A
N/A
19-19-19-39 (2T)
Crucial Ballistix Max RGB DDR4-4000 C18
N/A
N/A
16-19-19-39 (2T)
N/A
20-20-20-40 (2T)
G.Skill Trident Z Royal DDR4-4000 C17
N/A
N/A
15-16-16-36 (2T)
18-19-19-39 (2T)
N/A
Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18
16-19-19-39 (2T)
N/A
N/A
18-22-22-42 (2T)
N/A
Patriot Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3600 C20
16-20-20-40 (2T)
17-26-26-46 (2T)
N/A
N/A
N/A
As we’ve seen before, you won’t be able to run Hynix ICs at very tight timings. That’s not to say that the Viper Steel RGB doesn’t have any wiggle room though. With a 1.45V DRAM voltage, we optimized the memory to run at 16-20-20-40 as opposed to the XMP profile’s 20-26-26-46 timings.
Bottom Line
It comes as no surprise that the Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3600 C20 will not beat competing memory kits that have more optimized timings. The problem is that C20 is basically at the bottom of the barrel by DDR4-3600 standards.
The Viper Steel RGB won’t match or surpass the competition without serious manual tweaking. The memory kit’s hefty $199.99 price tag doesn’t do it any favors, either. To put it into perspective, the cheapest DDR4-3600 2x16GB memory kit on the market starts at $154.99, and it checks in with C18. Unless Patriot rethinks the pricing for the Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3600 C20, the memory kit will likely not be on anyone’s radar.
AMD’s 300-series motherboards were never part of the chipmaker’s support plan for Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) processors. However, an avid enthusiast (via HKEPC) has modified ASRock’s firmware to support AMD’s latest Zen 3 chips.
First and foremost, it’s important to emphasize that it’s a Beta firmware, and an unofficial one at that, which doesn’t come from ASRock. An unknown source provided the firmware files to Hong Kong-based news outlet HKEPC for distribution. The publication has tested the firmware and confirmed that Ryzen 5000 processors indeed work without hiccups on the select few X370 ASRock motherboards. Of course, there are bound to be bugs or stability issues with unofficial firmware, although none have been reported so far that we know of. So, use at your own risk.
The altered firmwares are vailable for six ASRock X370 motherboards, including the X370 Gaming K4, X370 Gaming X, X370 Killer SLI, X370 Killer SLI/ac, X370 Taichi and Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming.
Getting Ryzen 5000 processors to work on unsupported motherboards is one thing. But yu’ll still be losing out on PCIe 4.0 functionality, one of the biggest selling points for Zen 3. Since X370 motherboards weren’t built with PCIe 4.0 in mind, you won’t be able to enjoy the fastest SSDs on the market. However, you will have access to Zen 3’s prowess though, which ushered in IPC uplifts up to 19%. That alone should be enough incentive to upgrade to the new Ryzen 5000 series. And if you can’t afford a new motherboard when doing so, this is at least an option to get things up and running–albeit one you should probably think long and hard about before flashing the board and dropping in your new chip.
AMD has released its new Ryzen CPU Performance Guide for software developers that provides a set of tips and tools how to properly optimize programs for AMD’s processors. While the new version of the guide is tailored primarily for the latest Zen 3 microarchitecture as well as Ryzen 5000-series CPUs, this new set of tools can also increase performance of systems running previous-generation AMD processors.
All CPU vendors work closely with software developers to ensure that programs can take advantage of the latest technologies and capabilities of their hardware. Identifying performance bottlenecks, CPU under-utilization, thread contention, cross-core thread migration, etc that prevent hardware from delivering its best, can significantly boost performance on all types of processors no matter which microarchitecture they are based on.
AMD’s Ryzen CPU Performance Guide provides software developers with not only the necessary tools useful for performance boosting or identifying possible bottlenecks, but also valuable tips about memory usage, testing, compiling, debugging, and profiling. Many of AMD’s recommendations are general, so following them can increase performance not only on the latest AMD Zen 3-powered systems, but even on Intel-based PCs.
With a Zen 3-focused CPU Performance Guide released, it is reasonable to expect software developers to better optimize their programs for AMD’s latest processors. When to expect widespread availability of Zen 3-optimized apps depends on many factors. For obvious reasons, it is easier to optimize smaller projects with fewer bottlenecks and generally lower performance requirements. Meanwhile, performance-hungry applications usually get the greatest benefits from optimizations.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Today we’ll dive in deep on the best memory settings for your Ryzen mobile laptop. Sequels don’t always live up to the originals, and that’s true even in the processor world. In AMD’s case, however, it’s the complete opposite. The Zen microarchitecture has unquestionably become an important building block for the chipmaker, and AMD has consistently delivered impressive gen-over-gen performance uplifts with every new Zen iteration.
Zen 3, the most recent installment in the Zen family, isn’t a microarchitecture to be underestimated, either. Ushering in major IPC upgrades up to 19%, Zen 3 processors have cemented their position on our current list of Best CPUs. The same Zen 3 prowess has made its way to the mobile market, and the latest Ryzen 5000 Mobile (Cezanne) chips power some of the most powerful laptops on the market today.
Memory doesn’t always receive the attention that it deserves, but it should. Memory has proven to play a meaningful role with the previous Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) processors. Ryzen 5000 retains a similar memory subsystem that supports DDR4-3200 or LPDDR4X-4266 memory. Some laptops fall into the first category as they provide conventional SO-DIMM memory slots to house the corresponding memory modules. Laptops in the second category come with memory chips permanently soldered to the motherboard, so expansion is out of the question. Hybrid designs feature the best of both worlds — both soldered memory and usually one empty SO-DIMM memory slot.
Unlike we see in desktop PCs, memory tuning still has a long way to go on Ryzen 5000 laptops. The memory options are permanently locked away, so there isn’t any liberty for users to play with memory timings. Furthermore, Ryzen 5000 laptops are constricted to SO-DIMM memory kits rated for 1.2V. However, our sources have whispered to us that Cezanne may finally change the panorama for tweakers. AMD is reportedly contemplating the possibility of opening memory tuning on Ryzen 5000 laptops and the ability to use SO-DIMM memory kits up to 1.35V. There is also talk of a full recovery mechanism similar to modern motherboards where it restores the device to factory default settings. That means that, in the event of an overclocking failure, you won’t have to worry about bricking your laptop.
XMG Core 15 (2021)
XMG Core 15 (2021) (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Hopping on to AMD’s Zen 3 train, XMG has brought the company’s emblematic Core 15 gaming laptop up to speed in terms of hardware. The XMG Core 15 (2021) retains the strong genes of a portable gaming and productivity workhouse. The new E21 iteration employs the best of what AMD and Nvidia currently have to offer and arrives with other upgrades, such as the 1920×1080 240 Hz or 2560×1440 165 Hz IPS panels.
Coming as no surprise, the XMG Core 15 (2021) leverages the new Ryzen 7 5800H, which is the direct successor to last generation’s Ryzen 7 4800H. Landing with eight Zen 3 cores with simultaneous multithreading (SMT), the Ryzen 5 5600H offers base and boost clock speeds up to 3.2 GHz and 4.4 GHz, respectively. With two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots, the Ryzen 7 5800H supports up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 memory.
The Ryzen 7 5800H brings with it eight Vega Compute Units (CUs) clocked at 2,000 MHz. The iGPU is great for everyday tasks and helps with battery life, but the supplementary GeForce RTX 3060 (Ampere) does all the heavy lifting when it comes to demanding graphical workloads. The Core 15 (2021) uses the 115W variant with an extra 15W headroom for Dynamic Boost 2.0. Specification-wise, the GeForce RTX 3060 wields 3,584 CUDA cores and 6GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory to handle the most demanding triple-A titles.
When it comes to SO-DIMM memory, G.Skill’s Ripjaws lineup offers a wide variety of memory kits for consumers to choose from. G.Skill, who’s a repeating vendor on our list of Best RAM, sells its Ripjaws SO-DIMM memory as a standalone memory module as well as in dual-and quad-channel packages.
In the dual-channel presentations, the memory kits come in a capacity of 16GB (2x8GB), 32GB (2x16GB) and 64GB (2x32GB). The available memory frequencies range from DDR4-2133 to DDR4-3200. G.Skill backs its Ripjaws memory kits with a limited lifetime warranty, so they offer both performance and security for your investment.
Memory Scaling
Before we get into the RAM benchmarks, we observed a very peculiar behaviour with Ryzen 5000. Apparently, only memory that’s specifically clocked at DDR4-2933 and above runs at the 1T command rate (CR). It’s important to point this out because DDR4-2933 and DDR4-3200 will have a slight edge over the other memory frequencies since the lower-frequency memory kits were stuck at 2T. The behaviour seems weird since memory runs at 1T on the Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) platform regardless of the frequency.
We’ve reached out to an XMG representative regarding the issue. The official word is that the timing behaviour at memory speeds below DDR4-3200 is normal for AMD Cezanne (according to information from AMD). We also confirmed that the Memory SPD feature seems to be locked for Thaiphoon Burner and CPU-Z tools due to security consideration. No further details were given.
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
For reference, DDR4-2133 is JEDEC’s baseline specification for DDR4 memory, while DDR4-3200 is the official supported memory frequency on Ryzen 5000. If we just look at the geometric mean, there was a 4.8% performance difference between the two settings. We used a mixed bag of workloads that both are and aren’t responsive to memory frequency, so it evens out. Be aware that individual performance gains could be higher, according to the specific workload.
In Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, DDR4-3200 delivered up to 6.8% and 4.7% higher performance, respectively, over DDR4-2133. HandBrake was also sensitive to fast memory. DDR4-3200 reduced x264 and x265 conversion times by up to 5.22% and 5%, respectively.
7-Zip compression workloads benefitted the most from DDR4-3200 memory. It offered 19% better performance than DDR4-2133. However, DDR4-3200 wasn’t the absolute winner in every race, though. In the Corona 1.3 benchmark, for instance, DDR4-3200, DDR4-2933, and DDR4-2666 performed equally well.
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
For our gaming tests, we used the native 1920×1080 (1080p) resolution for the XMG Core 15 (2021). We used the High preset in our games because the setting allowed a balance between image fidelity and performance. If you game at lower image settings, the performance boosts should be even higher because the graphics card becomes less of a bottleneck.
Overall, DDR4-3200 provided a 4.3% improvement in frame rates over DDR4-2133 across our suite of seven titles. There were a few games where DDR4-3200 presented a notable boost in performance: DDR4-3200 finished with 6% higher frame rates in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, 6.8% in Watch Dogs: Legion, and up to 15.2% in Far Cry Dawn.
Single-Rank vs. Dual-Rank
It’s easy to identify if a SO-DIMM memory module is single-rank or dual-rank before purchase. Without going into the technical specifics, memory modules that are 16GB generally adhere to a dual-rank design. We say generally because some vendors are currently commercializing 16GB single-rank memory modules. Nevertheless, we recommend that you consult with the specification sheet to corroborate the design.
Ryzen 5000 laptops that come equipped with two SO-DIMM memory slots bless users with the potential to add up to four total memory ranks. This requires two dual-rank memory modules, meaning 32GB (2x16GB) is the minimum amount of memory needed to maximize the number of memory ranks.
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
When you increase the number of memory ranks, you also increase the total memory capacity in the process. Therefore, it’s important to bear in mind that some workloads profit more from the increased density than others, which results in higher performance.
If we look at the single SO-DIMM configurations, the 16GB (dual-rank) memory module improved performance by 9.6% over the 8GB (single-rank) memory module. The margin jumped to 10.6% with the 32GB (dual-rank) memory module. However, if we compare the 16GB memory module to the 32GB one, we only recorded a 0.9% difference. Going to 32GB doesn’t improve performance, but it helps if you’re a heavy multitasker.
We saw similar behavior with the dual-channel setups, although the performance margins weren’t as significant as the single SO-DIMM scenario. Four memory ranks (2x16GB) were only 3.3% better than two memory ranks (2x8GB). Meanwhile, the difference between the 2x16GB and 2x32GB configurations was still negligible.
The biggest takeaway is that running memory in a dual-channel configuration outweighed a single memory module even if the total number of memory ranks were equal. For instance, you achieve two memory ranks by using a single 16GB memory module or a pair of 8GB memory modules. Nevertheless, the latter option supplied 7.7% higher performance.
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Ryzen 5000 Mobile Memory Scaling (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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A single 16GB memory module offered 7.4% higher frame rates than an 8GB memory module. The performance delta between the 16GB and 32GB memory modules was less than 2%, though. We noticed similar performance margins with the dual-channel configurations. The 2x16GB setup only outshined the 2x8GB and 2x32GB setups by 1.5% and 1.1%, respectively.
Dual-channel operation continued to play a significant role in gaming. The 2x8GB memory kit pumped out 7.3% higher frame rates than the single 16GB memory module, despite both having the same number of memory ranks.
Our Key Takeaways
DDR4-3200 is essentially the gold standard for Ryzen 5000 mobile processors. If money is tight, DDR4-2666 is the halfway point on the performance ladder. In either case, aim for the lowest timings possible. In the meantime, we’re stuck with SO-DIMM memory kits that don’t require XMP activation or 1.35V. However, this may change in the future if AMD opens memory tuning on Ryzen 5000 laptops.
Whenever possible, fill both SO-DIMM memory slots in your Ryzen laptop to take advantage of the performance boost from dual-channel operation. With equivalent memory ranks, you lose as much as 7.7% performance when running a single memory module as opposed to a dual-channel SO-DIMM memory kit. If your laptop only came with just one memory module and there’s an empty SO-DIMM slot, consider adding another memory module for a nice performance uplift.
Populating all four memory ranks is the ultimate configuration for application and gaming performance. The cheapest path to get to four memory ranks is a 32GB (2x16GB) memory kit, preferably DDR4-3200 if you want to maximize performance. For budget-conscious users, a 16GB (2×8) memory kit should suffice while allowing you to take advantage of dual-channel technology as well.
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On paper, the Surface Laptop 4 is a Surface Laptop 3 with better chips.
In look and feel, very little has changed from the last generation. Sure, there are differences here and there: the Laptop 4 is ever-so-slightly thinner, and there’s a new “Ice Blue” color option. But you get the same 3:2 touchscreen, the same port selection, and the same design.
The big changes are on the inside. You can configure both the 13.5-inch and 15-inch Surface Laptop models with either Intel’s 11th-Gen processors or AMD’s Ryzen 4000 processors. Microsoft promised that these improvements would deliver significantly better performance and battery life than the previous Surface generation.
So this review will largely focus on the new system’s performance. But my priority wasn’t to compare the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 that we received to its predecessor. For one, the Laptop 3 set a low performance bar — it had mediocre battery life, and couldn’t even play a 4K 60FPS video without stuttering, so even a competent budget laptop would blow that out of the water. But more importantly, there’s another company out there that recently made a huge chip upgrade to its flagship models, which has left most other 2020 chip upgrades in the dust: Apple, with its Arm-based M1. So my big question when looking at AMD’s new Ryzen 7 Surface Edition (also known as the AMD Ryzen 7 4980U Microsoft Surface Edition because of course it is) is: Does it beat Apple’s M1?
The answer is no. For the most part, it’s still not quite as good. But that may not matter to Surface Laptop 4 buyers — at least, not yet.
First, a quick tour of the Ryzen 7 Surface Edition. This chip isn’t AMD’s top gun; it’s part of the Ryzen 4000 generation, and the Ryzen 5000 mobile series has been out for a few months now. It’s a bit disappointing to see that the Surface is still using the older Ryzen chips, since much of the new generation is based on a new architecture (Zen 3, to the 4000 series’s Zen 2) that has delivered performance gains.
Of course, that doesn’t make the Ryzen 7 4980U a bad chip. Ryzen 4000 chips outperform Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake processors across the board. The 4980U in particular has eight cores, and AMD’s excellent Radeon integrated graphics. Note that the M1 also has eight cores, but those cores aren’t created equal. An easy way to think of it is that AMD’s chip has eight all-around-pretty-good cores, while Apple’s chip has four high-performance cores and four weaker cores. You’ll see that difference reflected in our benchmark results later on.
In addition to that processor, the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 I reviewed comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It costs $1,699. The most comparable M1 MacBook Pro is also $1,699. If you’re not looking to spend that much, you can get the 15-inch Laptop 4 for as low as $1,299 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which puts it neck-in-neck with the entry-level MacBook Pro, but with a bigger screen. The 13.5-inch Laptop 4 is priced more closely to the fanless MacBook Air, starting at $999 for a Ryzen 5 4680U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Then, there are the Intel models. You can get a 13.5-inch system with a Core i5 starting at $1,299 (also with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage), and a 15-inch system with a Core i7 starting at $1,799 (16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage). It’s all quite confusing, so I recommend visiting Microsoft’s site for yourself to mix and match.
The 13.5-inch model comes in Platinum, Ice Blue Alcantara, Matte Black, and Sandstone. The 15-incher comes in Platinum and Matte Black.
To see how our test system stacks up, I ran various synthetic benchmarks as well as a 5-minute, 33-second 4K video export in Premiere Pro. See the results below:
Surface Laptop 4 15-inch benchmarks
Benchmark
Score
Benchmark
Score
Cinebench R23 Multi
8144
Cinebench R23 Single
1242
Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes
8077
Geekbench 5 CPU Multi
7028
Geekbench 5 CPU Single
1163
Geekbench 5 OpenCL / Compute
14393
PugetBench for Premiere Pro
176
Right off the bat, this system is a huge improvement over the Surface Laptop 3. It took 16 minutes and 33 seconds on the video export, where its predecessor took over three hours. (16:33 is a slower time than we’ve seen from many Intel models, but that’s expected since AMD chips don’t support Intel’s Quick Sync.) The Laptop 4 also beats multi-core synthetic results we’ve seen from Intel’s top Tiger Lake chips in the MSI Prestige 14 Evo and the Vaio Z, as well as the 16-inch Intel-based MacBook Pro,
Intel models max out at a quad-core Core i7-1185G7.
But the more interesting comparison is to the M1 machines. The Surface Laptop 4 solidly beats both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air on Cinebench R23 Multi, and that task alone — it lost to both machines on every other test we ran, including all three Geekbench tests, the Puget for Premiere Pro benchmark, and the Premiere Pro export. That may seem confusing but (again) it makes sense when you think about the architecture of both chips — the Ryzen chip does better on the task where it can show off all eight of its powerful cores. That indicates that you’ll do well with the Surface Book if you’re running heavy multicore workloads, where you’re more suited to the M1 if you’re primarily doing pretty much anything else.
Of course, that’s far from the whole story. The reality is that most people who want a 15-inch screen probably don’t care if there’s a better-performing 13-inch machine floating around. And the MacBook that’s comparable in size — the MacBook Pro 16 — is significantly more expensive than the Surface Laptop 4, and comes with older Intel chips. So why am I comparing this device to M1 systems, you may ask? Really, I’m benching this laptop against an imaginary 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which (rumor has it) will launch sometime in the third quarter of this year. Given the results I’m seeing here, the release of a machine like that would make the Surface Laptop 4 a tougher purchase to justify.
That said, there are two big advantages the Ryzen-powered Surface Laptop 4 could very well have over a 16-inch M1 MacBook. The first is battery life. I got an average of 10 hours and 52 minutes using this device as my primary driver, which is some of the best battery life I’ve ever seen from a 15-inch laptop, and one of the best results I’ve seen from a laptop this year. That beats both of the M1 MacBooks, and destroys the 16-inch Intel MacBook as well. If there’s an area where Microsoft really makes its case, it’s here.
The Laptop 4 also knocks cooling out of the park. The Laptop 4’s fans did a really excellent job cooling the system. Throughout my fairly standard load of office multitasking (including around a dozen Chrome tabs, Spotify streaming, and the like), the chassis remained downright cold. During the more intense tests I ran, the CPU remained steadily in the mid-70s (Celsius) with occasional spikes up to the mid-80s — jumps up to 90 were rare. I was able to run our 4K video export several times in a row without any negative impact on results, and I didn’t see a huge dip in Cinebench results over a 30-minute loop either.
The screen maxed out at 370 nits — a bit dim for outdoor use, as you can see here.
If you’re a fan of the 15-inch Surface Laptop’s design, you’ll be happy to know it hasn’t changed much. One of the big advantages of this device is how thin and light it is, at just 0.58 inches thick and 3.4 pounds. For context, it’s almost a pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and over half a pound lighter than the lightest Dell XPS 15. It’s actually only a bit heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
With that said, those who aren’t diehard Surface fans may find the Laptop 4’s design a tad dated. In particular, the bezels around the 3:2 screen are quite chunky. That makes sense on a convertible device like the Surface Book 3 or the Surface Pro 7, which you need to be able to hold as a tablet, but doesn’t fit as well on a clamshell. If you put the Laptop 4 next to any member of the XPS line, you’ll see how much sleeker and more modern the latter looks. That doesn’t mean the Laptop 4 is ugly; it’s just falling further behind other Windows laptops each year.
The port selection is also the same, which is good news and bad news. The Laptop 4 retains a USB-A port, which I stubbornly believe is still a necessity for modern laptops (looking at you, Apple and Dell). But there is just one, and neither the Intel or AMD model supports Thunderbolt on their lone USB-C ports, which is disappointing on a laptop at this price. The Surface Laptop could certainly do with more port options, even if it’s competitive with what Apple and Dell are offering in terms of numbers. (In addition to the USB-A and USB-C, you get a headphone jack and Microsoft’s proprietary charging port.)
The Windows Hello webcam is fine, delivering a serviceable picture, and the dual far-field microphones had no trouble picking up my voice. The speakers, which now support Dolby Atmos 9, sound quite clear, with good volume and bass and percussion that are audible (though not booming). Despite having Atmos speakers, our Laptop 4 unit didn’t come preloaded with Dolby Atmos software or anything similar to tune the audio.
All 15-inch models have an aluminum body.
My least favorite part of this laptop is the keyboard. It’s just a bit flat and mushy for my taste. I respect that some people prefer wider, flatter keycaps, of course. But I would take an XPS 15, MacBook, or Surface Book keyboard over this one — it’s just not quite as snappy or satisfying.
Overall, it’s tough to identify a true competitor to the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4. Put it next to a Windows workstation like the $1,200 entry-level Dell XPS 15 and the Surface wins on power, battery life, and weight. It’s a good purchase for someone who wants an excellent combination of efficiency and multicore performance in a 15-inch chassis, but doesn’t need the grunt of a discrete GPU.
The keyboard is backlit and has 1.3 mm of travel.
But that window of opportunity may be closing, because there’s very likely a larger M1 MacBook Pro on the way. I think there’s a good argument that people in the group described above (who don’t need a device right this second) should sit back and wait to see what Apple does in the next few months before committing to Microsoft’s machine, provided they don’t have a hard preference for operating systems.
On the other hand, even if the larger MacBook Pro is spectacular, there are some advantages the Laptop 4 will certainly retain (it runs Windows, and it’s built like a Surface Laptop) and some it will probably retain (it’ll likely be lighter than the MacBook Pro 16). And, of course, plenty of people need a laptop right now. In today’s market, among today’s 15-inch laptops, the Surface Laptop 4 is a pretty damn good buy. Microsoft didn’t change much about the outside — but on the inside, it really pulled through.
AMD’s EPYC Milan processors launched last month with 120 new world records to their credit in various applications, like HPC, Cloud, and enterprise workloads. But variants of these chips will eventually come to the market as Threadripper models for high end desktop PCs, and AMD’s server records don’t tell us too much about what we could expect from the PC chips. However, the company recently broke the Cinebench world record with its Milan chips, giving us an idea of what to expect in rendering work. Just for fun, we also ran a few tests on Intel’s new flagship 40-core Ice Lake Xeon chips to see how they stack up against not only AMD’s new record it set with the server chips, but also a single AMD Threadripper processor.
During the latest episode of AMD’s The Bring Up YouTube video series, the company took two of its $7,980 EPYC Milan 7763 chips for a spin in Cinbench R23, a rendering application that AMD commonly uses for its desktop PC marketing (largely because it responds exceedingly well to AMD’s Zen architectures).
As a quick reminder, AMD’s flagship 7763 server chips come armed with the 64 Zen 3 cores and 128 threads apiece and have a 2.45 GHz base and 3.5 GHz boost frequency. All told, we’re looking at a Cinebench run with 128 cores and 256 threads, which you can see in the tweet below:
So sieht das aus, wenn sich 2x 64 Zen-3-Kerne durch den Cinebench R23 fressen. pic.twitter.com/o9jiZeKPlRApril 15, 2021
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The dual 7763’s scored 113,631 points, while the previous world record weighed in at 105,570 (as per HWBot rankings). AMD says it used a reference server design with conventional air cooling for the test run, so there were no special accommodations or overclocking. The system peaked at 85C and 403W during the test run. Here’s AMD’s official HWBot world record submission.
1K Unit Price / RCP
Cores / Threads
Base / Boost – All Core (GHz)
L3 Cache (MB)
TDP (W)
AMD EPYC Milan 7763
$7,890
64 / 128
2.45 / 3.5
256
280
Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
$8,099
40 / 80
2.3 / 3.2 – 3.0
60
270
That isn’t much info to work with, but it’s enough for us to set up our own test. We ran a few tests with a dual Xeon 8380 Ice Lake Xeon server we used for our recent review. Much like AMD’s test system, this is a standard development design with air cooling (more details in the review). The Xeon system houses two $8,099 10nm Ice Lake Xeons with 40 cores 80 threads apiece that operate at a 2.3 GHz base and 3.2 GHz boost frequency. Yes, AMD’s Milan outweighs the Xeon system, but the Ice Lake 8380 is Intel’s highest-end part, and both chips come with comparable pricing.
We’re looking at the EPCY Milan server with 128 cores and 256 threads against the Intel Ice Lake system with 80 cores and 160 threads. Our quick tests here are not 100% like-for-like so take these with a grain of salt, though we did our best to match AMD’s test conditions. Here are our test results, with a few extras from the HWBot benchmark database mixed in:
Cinebench Benchmarks
Score
Cooling
Chip Price
2x AMD EPYC Milan 7763
113,631
Air
$15,780
1x Threadripper 3990X (Splave)
105,170
Liquid Nitrogen (LN2)
$3,990
2x EPYC 7H12
92,357
Air
?
2x Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
74,630
Air
$17,000
1x Threadripper 3990X (stock)
64,354
All-In-One (AIO) Liquid Cooling
$3,990
As you can see, in Cinebench R23, the dual EPYC Milan 7763’s are 34% faster than the dual Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s. AMD lists a 403W peak power consumption during its tests, but we assume those measurements are for the processors only (and perhaps only a single processor). In contrast, our power measurement at the wall for the Xeon 8380 server weighed in at 1154W, but that includes a beastly 512GB of memory, other platform additives, and VRM losses, etc., meaning it’s just a rough idea of power consumption that isn’t comparable to the EPYC system.
Naturally, Cinebench R23 results have absolutely no bearing on the purchasing decision for a data center customer, but it is an interesting comparison. Notably, a single Threadripper 3990X, when pressed to its fullest with liquid nitrogen by our resident overclocking guru Splave, still beats the two Xeon Platinum 8380’s, though the 8380’s pull off the win against an air-cooled 3990X at stock settings (measured in our labs).
Finally, we decided to see how two Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s compare against a broader set of processors. Intel suffered quite a bit of embarrassment back at AMD’s launch of the 64-core Threadripper 3900X for high-end desktop PCs, as this $3,990 processor (yes, just one) beat two of Intel’s previous-gen 8280 Xeons in a range of threaded workloads. Intel’s Xeon’s weighed in at $20,000 total and represented the company’s fastest server processors. Ouch.
In fact, those benchmark results were so amazing that we included an entire page of testing in our Threadripper 3990X review comparing two of Intel’s fire-breathing behemoths to AMD’s single workstation chip, which you can see here. As a bit of a redux, we decided to revisit the standings with a quick run of Cinebench R20 with the new Intel 10nm Xeons. Notably, this test is with an older version of the benchmark than we used above, but that’s so we can match our historical data in the chart below:
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Unfortunately, we don’t have a dual-socket EPYC Milan 7763 system to add to our historical test results here, but we get a good enough sense of Ice Lake’s relative positioning with this chart. The two Intel Ice Lake 8380’s, which weigh in at $17,000, beat the single $3,990 Threadripper 3900X at stock settings. That’s at least better than the dual 8280’s that lost so convincingly in the past.
However, a quick toggle of the PBO switch, which is an automated overclocking feature from AMD that works with standard cooling solutions (no liquid nitrogen required), allows a single Threadripper 3990X to regain the lead over Intel’s newest 10nm flagships in this test. Intel’s latest chips also can’t beat AMD’s previous-gen EPYC Rome 7742’s, which are 64-core chips.
Of course, this single benchmark has almost no bearing on the enterprise market that the Ice Lake chips are destined for, and the latest Xeon’s do make solid steps forward in a broader range of tests that do matter, which you can see in our Ice Lake 8380 review.
The Intel Core i5-11600K vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600X rivalry is a heated battle for supremacy right in the heart of the mid-range CPU market. AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors took the lead in the desktop PC from Intel’s competing Comet Lake processors last year, upsetting our Best CPU for gaming recommendations and our CPU Benchmarks hierarchy. Intel’s response comes in the form of its Rocket Lake processors, which dial up the power to extreme levels and bring the new Cypress Cove architecture to the company’s 14nm process as Intel looks to upset AMD’s powerful Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 chips.
Intel has pushed its 14nm silicon to the limits as it attempts to unseat the AMD competition, and that has paid off in the mid-range where Intel’s six-core Core i5-11600K weighs in with surprisingly good performance given its $232 to $262 price point.
Intel’s aggressive pricing, and the fact that the potent Ryzen 5 5600X remains perpetually out of stock and price-gouged, has shifted the conversation entirely. For Intel, all it has to do is serve up solid pricing, have competitive performance, and make sure it has enough chips at retail to snatch away the win.
We put the Core i5-11600K up against the Ryzen 5 5600X in a six-round faceoff to see which chip takes the crown in our gaming and application benchmarks, along with other key criteria like power consumption and pricing. Let’s see how the chips stack up.
Features and Specifications of AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Intel Core i5-11600K
Rocket Lake Core i5-11600K vs AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5 5600X Specifications and Pricing
Suggested Price
Cores / Threads
Base (GHz)
Peak Boost (Dual/All Core)
TDP
iGPU
L3
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
$299 (and much higher)
6 / 12
3.7
4.6
65W
None
32MB (1×32)
Intel Core i5-11600K (KF)
$262 (K) – $237 (KF)
6 / 12
3.9
4.6 / 4.9 (TB2)
125W
UHD Graphics 750 Xe 32EU
12MB
The 7nm Ryzen 5 5600X set a new bar for the mid-range with six Zen 3 cores and twelve threads that operate at a 3.7-GHz base and 4.6-GHz boost frequency. Despite AMD’s decision to hike gen-on-gen pricing, the 5600X delivered class-leading performance at its launch, not to mention a solid price-to-performance ratio. Things have changed since then, though, due to overwhelming demand coupled with pandemic-spurred supply chain disruptions, both of which have combined to make finding the Ryzen 5 5600X a rarity at retail, let alone at the suggested $299 pricing.
Intel’s Core i5-11600K also comes with six cores and twelve threads, but Team Blue’s chips come with the new Cypress Cove architecture paired with the aging 14nm process. Intel has tuned this chip for performance; it weighs in with a 3.9-GHz base, 4.9-GHz Turbo Boost 2.0, and 4.6-GHz all-core clock rates. All of these things come at the expense of power consumption and heat generation.
Intel specs the 14nm 11600K at a 125W TDP rating, but that jumps to 182W under heavy loads, while AMD’s denser and more efficient 7nm process grants the 5600X a much-friendlier 65W TDP rating that coincides with a peak of 88W. We’ll dive deeper into power consumption a bit later, but this is important because the Core i5-11600K comes without a cooler. You’ll need a capable cooler, preferably a 280mm liquid AIO or equivalent air cooler, to unlock the best of the 11600K.
Meanwhile, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X comes with a bundled cooler that is sufficient for most users, though you would definitely need to upgrade to a better cooler if you plan on overclocking. Additionally, a more robust cooler will unlock slightly higher performance in heavy work, like rendering or encoding. Still, you’d need to do that type of work quite regularly to see a worthwhile benefit, so most users will be fine with the bundled cooler.
Both the Core i5-11600K and Ryzen 5 5600X support PCIe 4.0, though it is noteworthy that Intel’s chipset doesn’t support the speedier interface. Instead, devices connected to Intel’s chipset operate at PCIe 3.0 speeds. That means you’ll only have support for one PCIe 4.0 m.2 SSD port on your motherboard, whereas AMD’s chipset is fully enabled for PCIe 4.0, giving you more options for a plethora of faster devices.
Both chips also support two channels of DDR4-3200 memory, but Intel’s new Gear memory feature takes a bit of the shine off Intel’s memory support. At stock settings, the 11600K supports DDR4-2933 in Gear 1 mode, which provides the best latency and performance for most tasks, like gaming. You’ll have to operate the chip in Gear 2 mode for warrantied DDR4-3200 support, but that results in performance penalties in some latency-sensitive apps, like gaming, which you can read about here.
For some users, the 11600K does have a big insurmountable advantage over the Ryzen 5 5600X: The chip comes with the new UHD Graphics 750 comes armed with 32 EUs based on the Xe graphics engine, while all Ryzen 5000 processors come without integrated graphics. That means Intel wins by default if you don’t plan on using a discrete GPU.
Notably, you could also buy Intel’s i5-11600KF, which comes with a disabled graphics engine, for $25 less. At $237, the 11600KF looks incredibly tempting, which we’ll get to a bit later.
Winner: AMD
The Ryzen 5 5600X and the Core i5-11600K are close with six cores and twelve threads (and each of those cores has comparable performance), but the 5600X gets the nod here due to its bundled cooler and native support for DDR4-3200 memory. Meanwhile, the Core i5-11600K comes without a cooler, and you’ll have to operate the memory in sub-optimal Gear 2 mode to access DDR4-3200 speeds, at least if you want to stay within the warranty.
The Core i5-11600K comes with integrated graphics, so it wins by default if you don’t plan on using a discrete GPU. Conversely, you can sacrifice the graphics for a lower price point. AMD has no high-end chips that come with integrated graphics, though that will change by the end of the year when the Ryzen 5000 Cezanne APUs arrive.
Gaming Performance on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i9-11600K
The Ryzen 5 and Core i5 families tend to be the most popular gaming chips, and given the big architectural advances we’ve seen with both the Zen 3 and Cypress Cove architectures, these mid-range processors can push fast GPUs along quite nicely.
That said, as per usual, we’re testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards, which you’ll see most often with this class of chip, or higher resolutions. Below you can see the geometric mean of our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p, with each resolution split into its own chart. PBO indicates an overclocked Ryzen configuration. You can find our test system details here.
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At stock settings at 1080p, the Core i5-11600K notches an impressive boost over its predecessor, the 10600K, but the Ryzen 5 5600X is 7.8% faster over the full span of our test suite. Overclocking the 11600K brings it up to snuff with the stock Ryzen 5 5600X, but the overclocked 5600X configuration is still 3.6% faster.
As you would expect, those deltas will shrink tremendously with lesser graphics cards or with higher resolutions. At 1440p, the stock 5600X is 3.3% faster than the 11600K, and the two tie after overclocking.
Flipping through the individual games shows that the leader can change quite dramatically, with different titles responding better to either Intel or AMD. Our geometric mean of the entire test suite helps smooth that out to one digestible number, but bear in mind – the faster chip will vary based on the game you play.
Notably, the 11600K is 14% less expensive than the 5600X, and that’s if (a huge if) you can find the 5600X at recommended pricing. You could also opt for the graphics-less 11600KF model and pay 26% less than the 5600X, again, if you can find the 5600X at recommended pricing.
Winner: AMDOverall, the Ryzen 5 5600X is the faster gaming chip throughout our test suite, but be aware that performance will vary based on the title you play. This class of chips is often paired with lesser graphics cards, and most serious gamers play at higher resolutions. In both of those situations, you could be hard-pressed to notice the difference between the processors. However, it’s rational to expect that the Ryzen 5 5600X will leave a bit more gas in the tank for future GPU upgrades.
Pricing is the wild card, though, and the Core i5-11600K wins that category easily — even if you could find the Ryzen 5 5600X at suggested pricing. We’ll dive into that in the pricing section.
Application Performance of Intel Core i5-11600K vs Ryzen 5 5600X
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We can boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single- and multi-threaded. The first slide in the above album has a geometric mean of performance in several of our single-threaded tests, but as with all cumulative measurements, use this as a general guide and be aware that performance will vary based on workload.
The Core i5-11600K takes the lead, at both stock and overclocked settings, by 3.8% and 1%, respectively. These are rather slim deltas, but it’s clear that the Rocket Lake chip holds the edge in lightly threaded work, particularly in our browser tests, which are a good indicator of general snappiness in a standard desktop PC operating system. We also see a bruising performance advantage in the single-threaded AVX-512-enabled y-cruncher.
The Core i5-11600K is impressive in single-threaded work, but the Ryzen 5 5600X isn’t far behind. It’s too bad that the 11600K’s lead in these types of tests doesn’t equate to leading performance in gaming, which has historically been the case with processors that excel at single-threaded tasks.
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Here we take a closer look at performance in heavily-threaded applications, which has long been the stomping grounds of AMD’s core-heavy Ryzen processors. Surprisingly, in our cumulative measurement, the Core i5-11600K is actually 2.5% faster than the 5600X at stock settings and is 1.8% faster after we overclocked both chips.
These are, again, slim deltas, and the difference between the chips will vary based on workload. However, the Core i5-11600K is very competitive in threaded work against the 5600X, which is an accomplishment in its own right. The substantially lower pricing is even more impressive.
Winner: Intel
Based on our cumulative measurement, Intel’s Core i5-11600K comes out on top in both single- and multi-threaded workloads, but by slim margins in both categories of workloads, and that can vary based on the application. However, given that the Core i5-11600K has significantly lower pricing and pulls out a few hard-earned wins on the application front, this category of the Core i5-11600K vs Ryzen 5 5600X competition goes to Intel.
Overclocking of Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i5-11600K
We have reached the land of diminishing returns for overclocking the highest-end chips from both AMD and Intel, largely because both companies are engaged in a heated dogfight for performance superiority. As a result, much of the overclocking frequency headroom is rolled into standard stock performance, leaving little room for tuners, making memory and fabric overclocking all the more important. There’s still plenty of advantages with overclocking the midrange models though in today’s Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i5-11600K battle, but be aware that your mileage may vary.
Intel benefits from higher attainable clock rates, especially if you focus on overclocking a few cores instead of the standard all-core overclock, and exposes a wealth of tunable parameters with its Rocket Lake chips. That includes separate AVX offsets for all three flavors of AVX, and the ability to set voltage guardbands. Intel also added an option to completely disable AVX, though that feature is primarily geared for professional overclockers. Rocket also supports per-core frequency and hyper-threading control (enable/disable) to help eke out more overclocking headroom.
The Core i5-11600K supports real-time memory frequency adjustments, though motherboard support will vary. For example, this feature allows you to shift from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200 from within Windows 10 without rebooting (or any other attainable memory frequency). Intel also supports live memory timing adjustments from within the operating system.
Intel has long locked overclocking to its pricey K-series models, while AMD freely allows overclocking with all SKUs on almost any platform. However, we see signs of some improvement here from Intel, as it has now enabled memory overclocking on its B560 and H570 chipsets across the board. That said, Intel’s new paradigm of Gear 1 and Gear 2 modes does reduce the value of memory overclocking, which you can read more about in our review.
AMD’s Ryzen 5000 chips come with innovative boost technology that largely consumes most of the available frequency headroom, so there is precious little room for bleeding-edge all-core overclocks. In fact, all-core overclocking with AMD’s chips is lackluster; you’re often better off using its auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive 2 (PBO2) feature that boosts multi-threaded performance. AMD also has plenty of Curve Optimization features that leverage undervolting to increase boost activity.
Much of the benefit of the Ryzen 500 series0 comes from its improved fabric overclocking, which then allows you to tune in higher memory overclocks. We hit a 1900-MHz fabric on our chip, allowing us to run the memory in a 1:1 mode at a higher DDR4-3800 memory speed than we could pull off with the 11600K with the same 1:1 ratio. It also isn’t uncommon to see enthusiasts hit DDR4-4000 in 1:1 mode with Ryzen 5000 processors. There’s no doubt that Intel’s new Gear 1 and 2 memory setup isn’t that refined — you can adjust the 5600X’s fabric ratio to expand the 1:1 window to higher frequencies, while Intel does not have a comparable adjustable parameter.
Winner: Tie
Both the Ryzen 5 5600X and the Core i5-11600K have a bit more overclocking headroom than their higher-end counterparts, meaning that there is still some room for gains in the mid-range. Both platforms have their respective overclocking advantages and a suite of both auto-overclocking and software utilities, meaning this contest will often boil down to personal preference.
Power Consumption, Efficiency, and Cooling of Intel Core i5-11600K vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
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The Core i5-11600K comes with the same 125W TDP rating as its predecessor, but that rating is a rough approximation of power consumption during long-duration workloads. To improve performance in shorter-term workloads, Intel increased the PL2 rating (boost) to 251W, a whopping 69W increase over the previous-gen 10600K that also came with six cores.
Power consumption and heat go hand in hand, so you’ll have to accommodate that power consumption with a robust cooler. We didn’t have any issues with the Core i5-11600K and a 280mm liquid cooler (you could get away with less), but we did log up to 176W of power consumption at stock settings during our Handbrake benchmark.
In contrast, the Ryzen 5 5600X sips power, reaching a maximum of 76W at stock settings during a Blender benchmark. In fact, a quick look at the renders-per-day charts reveals that AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X is in another league in terms of power efficiency — you get far more performance per watt consumed, which results in lower power consumption and heat generation.
The 5600X’s refined power consumption comes via TSMC’s 7nm process, while Intel’s 14nm process has obviously reached the end of the road in terms of absolute performance and efficiency.
Winner: AMD
AMD wins this round easily with lower power consumption, higher efficiency, and less thermal output. Intel has turned the power up to the extreme to stay competitive with AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 5000 chips, and as a result, the Core i5-11600K pulls more power and generates more heat than the Ryzen 5 5600X. Additionally, the Core i5-11600K doesn’t come with a bundled cooler, so you’ll need to budget in a capable model to unlock the best the chip has to offer, while the Ryzen 5 5600X comes with a bundled cooler that is good enough for the majority of users.
Pricing and Value of AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Intel Core i5-11600K
AMD was already riding the pricing line with the Ryzen 5 5600X’s suggested $299 price tag, but supply of this chip is volatile as of the time of writing, to put it lightly, leading to price gouging. This high pricing comes as a byproduct of a combination of unprecedented demand and pandemic-spurred supply chain issues, but it certainly destroys the value proposition of the Ryzen 5 5600X, at least for now.
The Ryzen 5 5600X currently retails for $370 at Microcenter, which is usually the most price-friendly vendor, a $69 markup over suggested pricing. The 5600X is also $450 from Amazon (not a third-party seller). Be aware that the pricing and availability of these chips can change drastically in very short periods of time, and they go in and out of stock frequently, reducing the accuracy of many price tracking tools.
In contrast, the Core i5-11600K can be found for $264 at Amazon, and $260 at Microcenter, which is surprisingly close to the $262 suggested tray pricing. Additionally, you could opt for the graphics-less Core i5-11600KF if you don’t need a discrete GPU. That chip is a bit harder to find than the widely-available 11600K, but we did find it for $240 at Adorama (near suggested pricing).
Here’s the breakdown (naturally, this will vary):
Suggested Price
Current (volatile for 5600X)
Price Per Core
Core i5-11600K
$262
$262 to $264
~$32.75
Ryzen 5 5600X
$299
$370 to $450
~$46.25 to $56.25
Core i5-11600KF
$237
$240 (spotty availability)
~$29.65
The Core i5-11600K doesn’t come with a cooler, so you’ll have to budget that into your purchasing decision.
Winner: Intel
Even at recommended pricing for both chips, Intel’s aggressive pricing makes the Core i5-11600K a tempting proposition, but the company wins this stage of the battle convincingly based on one almost insurmountable advantage: You can actually find the chip readily available at retail for very close to its suggested tray pricing. With much cheaper pricing both on a per-core and absolute basis, the Core i5-11600K is the better buy, and if you’re looking for an even lower cost of entry, the Core i5-11600KF is plenty attractive if you don’t need integrated graphics.
AMD’s premium pricing for the Ryzen 5 5600X was a bit of a disappointment for AMD fans at launch, but the chip did offer enough advantages to justify the price tag. However, the arrival of the Core i5-11600K with its disruptive pricing and good-enough performance would probably merit a slight pricing adjustment from AMD, or the release of a non-X model, if these were normal times. These aren’t normal times, though, and instead of improving its value proposition, AMD is facing crippling supply challenges.
Bottom Line
Intel Core i5-11600K
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Features and Specifications
X
Gaming
X
Application Performance
X
Overclocking
X
X
Power Consumption, Efficiency, and Cooling
X
Pricing and Value Proposition
X
Total
3
4
Here’s the tale of the tape: AMD wins this Ryzen 5 5600X vs Intel Core i5-11600K battle with a tie in one category and a win in three others, marking a four to three victory in favor of Team Red. Overall, the Ryzen 5 5600X offers up a superior blend of gaming performance, power consumption and efficiency, and a bundled cooler to help offset the higher suggested retail pricing, remaining our go-to chip recommendation for the mid-range. That is if you can find it at or near suggested pricing.
Unfortunately, in these times of almost unimaginably bad chip shortages, the chip that you can actually buy, or even find anywhere even near recommended pricing, is going to win the war at the checkout lane. For now, Intel appears to be winning the supply battle, though that could change in the coming months. As a result, the six-core twelve-thread Core i5-11600K lands with a friendly $262 price point, making it much more competitive with AMD’s $300 Ryzen 5 5600X that currently sells far over suggested pricing due to shortages.
The Core i5-11600K has a very competitive price-to-performance ratio compared to the Ryzen 5 5600X in a broad swath of games and applications. The 11600K serves up quite a bit of performance for a ~$262 chip, and the graphics-less 11600KF is an absolute steal if you can find it near the $237 tray pricing. If you don’t need an integrated GPU, the KF model is your chip.
Even if we compare the chips at AMD’s and Intel’s standard pricing, the Core i5-11600K is a potent challenger with a solid value proposition due to its incredibly aggressive pricing. While the Core i5-11600K might not claim absolute supremacy, its mixture of price and performance makes it a solid buy if you’re willing to overlook the higher power consumption.
Most gamers would be hard-pressed to notice the difference when you pair these chips with lesser GPUs or play at higher resolutions, though the Ryzen 5 5600X will potentially leave you with more gas in the tank for future GPU upgrades. The Ryzen 5 5600X is the absolute winner, though, provided you can find it anywhere close to the suggested retail price.
AMD has announced a new version of its Ryzen 5000 desktop processors — the Ryzen 5000 G-Series, which (like AMD’s previous G-Series offerings) adds an integrated GPU to the company’s existing Ryzen processors.
The company is launching six new APUs today. There are three 65W chips for more powerful machines — an eight-core Ryzen 7 5700G model, a six-core Ryzen 5 5600G, and a quad-core Ryzen 3 5300G — along with a trio of 35W GE chips with slightly less power and thermal headroom. And like their GPU-less counterparts, the new chips use AMD’s 7nm process and feature its Zen 3 architecture.
AMD Ryzen 5000 G-Series APUs
Model
Cores/
Threads
TDP
Base / Boost Frequency
(GHz)
GPU Compute Units
GPU clock speed
Model
Cores/
Threads
TDP
Base / Boost Frequency
(GHz)
GPU Compute Units
GPU clock speed
Ryzen 7 5700G
8C/16T
65W
3.8GHz / 4.6GHz
8
2,000MHz
Ryzen 7 5700GE
8C/16T
35W
3.2GHz / 4.6GHz
8
2,000MHz
Ryzen 5 5600G
6C/12T
65W
3.9GHz / 4.4GHz
7
1,900MHz
Ryzen 5 5600GE
6C/12T
35W
3.4GHz / 4.4GHz
7
1,900MHz
Ryzen 3 5300G
4C/8T
65W
4.0GHz / 4.2GHz
6
1,700MHz
Ryzen 3 5300GE
4C/8T
35W
3.6GHz / 4.2GHz
6
1,700MHz
The integrated GPUs here are nothing to write home about: they’re based on AMD’s legacy Vega platform instead of its newer RDNA / Navi process that’s used in its latest Radeon GPUs. But they do look capable enough for midrange gaming, particularly if you’re only interested in playing less demanding games like Overwatch, Rocket League, or Fortnite.
To start, the new chips will only be available as part of pre-built OEM systems — similar to AMD’s Ryzen 4000 APUs — but the company promises that this time, it’ll be offering the chips directly to customers interested in using them in their own custom-made machines sometime later this year.
AMD has announced that its 7nm Ryzen 5000G series APUs, codename Cezanne, are now shipping to OEMs with availability for the DIY/retail market coming later this year. AMD announced three primary 65W models that span from four Zen 3 cores up to eight cores, accompanied by Vega graphics that span from 6 graphics cores to eight. AMD hasn’t shared pricing for these processors yet — that information will likely come during the retail launch later this year. In either case, we are sure that these new chips will rank on our list of Best CPUs and Best Cheap CPUs.
Compared to intel’s Core i7-10700, AMD claims the chips are 38% faster in content creation, 35% faster in productivity, and are up to 2.17X faster in gaming, which comes courtesy of the built-in Radeon Vega graphics engine. AMD also provided plenty of benchmark comparisons, albeit against Intel’s 10th-gen processors and not the Rocket Lake chips that come with the more potent UHD Graphics 750 engine powered by 32 EUs with the Xe architecture.
As expected, AMD also released three low-power 35W variants with lower base frequencies to fit inside more restricted power/thermal environments and smaller builds. As with all Zen 3 processors, the Ryzen 5000G chips step up to a faster DDR4-3200 interface, which will certainly help the integrated GPU in gaming performance. However, AMD has stuck with the PCIe 3.0 interface found on all of its current-gen APUs.
Given the ongoing graphics card shortages, newly revamped APUs could be a welcome sight for the gaming market. That is if AMD can keep them in stock, of course. In either case, AMD’s willingness to bring these APUs to market is laudable given that its previous-gen Ryzen 4000 series APUs only landed in the OEM/pre-built market.
AMD Ryzen 5000G G-Series Specifications
AMD Ryzen 5000 G-Series 65W Renoir APUs
CPU
Cores/Threads
Frequency (Up to) Boost / Base
Graphics Cores
Graphics Frequency
TDP
Cache
Ryzen 7 5700G
8 / 16
3.8 / 4.6
RX Vega 8
2100 MHz
65W
20 MB
Ryzen 7 4700G
8 / 16
3.6 / 4.4
RX Vega 8
2100 MHz
65W
12 MB
Ryzen 5 5600G
6 / 12
3.9 / 4.4
RX Vega 7
1900 MHz
65W
19 MB
Ryzen 5 4600G
6 / 12
3.7 / 4.2
RX Vega 7
1900 MHz
65W
11 MB
Ryzen 3 5300G
4 / 8
4.0 / 4.2
RX Vega 6
1700 MHz
65W
10 MB
Ryzen 3 4300G
4 / 8
3.8 / 4.0
RX Vega 6
1700 MHz
65W
6 MB
The Ryzen 5000G lineup spans from four to eight cores, with the key addition being the Zen 3 architecture that provides a 19% IPC uplift over the Zen 2 architecture used in the previous-gen Ryzen 4000G models. We also see higher clock rates across the lineup, with peak boost speeds now weighing in at 4.6 GHz for the eight-core 5700G, whereas the previous-gen models topped out at 4.4 GHz. We also see that base clocks have increased by 200 MHz across the 65W chips.
The new architecture also grants higher L3 cache capacities. For instance, the eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 5700G now has 20MB of L3 cache compared to its eight-core predecessor that came with 12MB. These are the natural byproducts of the Zen 3 architecture and should benefit general iGPU performance, too.
AMD continues to pair the chips with the Vega graphics architecture, just as it did with the 4000-series APUs, but AMD reworked the architecture for its last go-round — the reworked RX Vega graphics delivered up to ~60% percent more performance per compute unit (CU) than its predecessors, which equated to more graphics performance from fewer CU. We aren’t sure if AMD has made a similar adjustment this time around, but we’ve reached out for more detail. We do know that the graphics units run at the same frequencies for each model.
All of the chips come with a 45W to 65W configurable TDP (cTDP), broadening the range of potential uses for these higher-end Ryzen 5000G APUs. If you need to dip below the 45W range, you would look at the GE Models below.
AMD Ryzen 5000 GE-Series 35W Renoir APUs
CPU
Cores/Threads
Frequency (Up to) Boost / Base
Graphics Cores
Graphics Frequency
TDP
Cache
Ryzen 7 5700GE
8 / 16
3.2 / 4.6
RX Vega 8
2000 MHz
35W
20 MB
Ryzen 7 4700GE
8 / 16
3.1 / 4.3
RX Vega 8
2000 MHz
35W
12 MB
Ryzen 5 5600GE
6 / 12
3.4 / 4.4
RX Vega 7
1900 MHz
35W
19 MB
Ryzen 5 4600GE
6 / 12
3.3 / 4.2
RX Vega 7
1900 MHz
35W
11 MB
Ryzen 3 5300GE
4 / 8
3.6 / 4.2
RX Vega 6
1700 MHz
35W
10 MB
Ryzen 3 4300GE
4 / 8
3.5 / 4.0
RX Vega 6
1700 MHz
35W
6 MB
Here we can see the new 35W models, which aren’t as exciting for regular users but are a boon for HTPC and SFF enthusiasts. As expected, base clocks are lower than the 65W models, but that’s needed to squeeze into the 35W TDP envelope. However, AMD retains the impressive single-threaded boosts, which is impressive.
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AMD Ryzen 5000G Performance Claims
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AMD presented plenty of comparisons to Intel’s Core i7-10700 and the Core i5-10600, but bear in mind that these are Intel’s previous-gen Comet Lake processors. That means these results are not representative of performance with the 11th-gen Rocket Lake chips that come with a significantly upgraded Xe UHD Graphics 750 engine that’s powered by 32 EUs. As per usual, take any vendor-provided benchmarks with the requisite grain of salt. The test notes are at the end of the album.
We’ve already seen listings of the Pro variants for commercial systems, but there are very few details about systems that will come with the consumer Cezanne chips. We expect that several vendors will announce new pre-built systems with the APUs over the coming weeks. We’ll update as we learn more.
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